The turn of the tide
What did he do? I've now had three conversations with my parents where I have been moderately more honest, to the limit of my courage or ability, to be honest and open. The first was with my mother, on her birthday, and the second two were with my father, one yesterday night and the other earlier tonight. There is so much I don't understand about what's happening. I was so angry while Dad and I spoke, in both conversations. It's amazing, and disconcerting. In the first conversation, with my mother, on her birthday, I told my mother a little of what I felt about my parents violent fights in our home. She offered me an apology, which is to say that she acknowledged that she was wrong. She knows it. She cannot feel it. If she felt it, it would motivate her to some sort of action. A lamentation is not understanding.
The conversations with my father were amazing. In the first, I did not feel up to trying to square some kind of account with him, so I decided to be honest about my mother, who is actually in the hospital. Apparently, she collapsed yesterday with some sort of UTI infection. She was in intensive care for awhile, although Dad told me this evening that the hospital had moved Mom to a room.
What in the hell is happening? I was enthusiastic this afternoon, if a bit scared. Tonight, after the phone call with Dad, I feel a residual anger and a bunch of confusion. What did he do to me? Is this something I did to myself?
So much about which to wonder. I had to go bury my nose in internet stuff in order to collect myself after the call. What's up with that? What's with the anger? It feels "clean, in that it is not misplaced or misdirected. There is irony here. When I first started talking to Laurel about this process, and reading, I read about being angry while talking to one's parents. I thought that the person in the example in Molyneux's book must be making it up. Did they have a reason for the anger? I knew, consciously, about how awry things had been, growing up in that house. I wasn't angry about it. I didn't get what Molyneux was implying that the reader do. Was I supposed to call up my parents and pretend to be angry? That's crazy. Now, I am angry. It is a knot behind my forehead. Surprisingly, it is not showing up in my shoulders, back and neck. Why would it be different now?